Early spread of COVID-19 far greater than initially reported: Study
Houston: There were thousands of undetected early cases of COVID-19 at the beginning of this year, according to a study which found that the disease was far more widespread in Wuhan, China, and Seattle in the US weeks ahead of lockdown measures in each city.
Researchers from The University of Texas (UT) at Austin in the US also concluded that the first case of COVID-19 in Seattle may have arrived as far back as Christmas or New Year's Day.
The study, published in the journal EClinicalMedicine, also found that about a third of the estimated undiagnosed cases in the US were among children.
The researchers extrapolated the extent of the COVID-19 epidemic in Wuhan and Seattle based on retested throat swabs taken from patients who were suffering from influenza-like illnesses during January in Wuhan and during late February and early March in Seattle.
When the samples were analysed later in each city, most turned out to be flu, but some turned out to be positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, the researchers said.
"Even before we realized that COVID-19 was spreading, the data imply that there was at least one case of COVID-19 for every two cases of flu," said Lauren Ancel Meyers, a professor at UT Austin.
"Since we knew how widespread flu was at that time, we could reasonably determine the prevalence of COVID-19, '' Meyers said.
When the Chinese government locked down Wuhan on January 22, there were 422 known cases, the researchers said.
However, extrapolating the throat-swab data across the city using a new epidemiological model, Meyers and her team found that there could have been more than 12,000 undetected symptomatic cases of COVID-19.
On March 9, the week when Seattle schools closed due to the virus, researchers estimated that more than 9,000 people with flu-like symptoms had COVID-19 and that about a third of that total were children.
The data do not imply that health authorities were aware of these infections, rather that they may have gone unseen during the early and uncertain stages of the pandemic.
"Given that COVID-19 appears to be overwhelmingly mild in children, our high estimate for symptomatic pediatric cases in Seattle suggests that there may have been thousands more mild cases at the time," said Zhanwei Du, a postdoctoral researcher in Meyers' lab and first author on the study.
According to several other studies, about half of COVID-19 cases are asymptomatic, leading researchers to believe that there may have been thousands more infected people in Wuhan and Seattle before each city's respective lockdown measures went into effect.
"We can go back and piece together the history of this pandemic using a combination of investigative techniques and modeling," Meyers said.
"This helps us understand how the pandemic spread so quickly around the globe and provides insight into what we may see in the coming weeks and months," she said.
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3 US troops killed, 5 seriously wounded during Iran attacks, military says
Washington (AP): Three American service members have been killed and five others seriously wounded during the US attacks on Iran, the military said Sunday, marking the first American casualties in a major offensive that has sparked retaliation from the Islamic Republic.
US Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, announced the deaths in a post on X but did not say when and where they occurred. The statement said “several others sustained minor shrapnel injuries and concussions” and were going to return to duty.
Central Command described the situation “as fluid” and said it would withhold the identities of the service members who were killed for 24 hours after their families were notified.
The US military also denied Iranian claims that the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier was struck with ballistic missiles, saying on X that the “missiles launched didn't even come close.”
President Donald Trump had warned that American troops could be killed or injured in the operation.
“The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties,” the Republican president said in a video address released early Saturday. “That often happens in war. But we're doing this not for now. We're doing this for the future.”
Following the US-Israeli strikes that killed Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other leaders, Iran's counterattacks have struck US bases in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.
Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard has threatened to launch its “most intense offensive operation” ever targeting Israeli and American military installations.
Before the strikes, Trump had built up the largest US military presence in the Middle East in decades. The arrival of the Lincoln and three accompanying guided-missile destroyers at the end of January bolstered the number of warships in the region.
The world's largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, and four accompanying destroyers later were dispatched from the Caribbean Sea to head to the Middle East.
The Ford was part of the US raid in Venezuela that captured leader Nicolás Maduro, who was brought to New York to face drug trafficking charges. The operation in January claimed no American lives but left seven US troops with gunshot wounds and shrapnel-related injuries.
One of those injured received the Medal of Honor during Trump's State of the Union address last week. Trump said Army Chief Warrant Officer 5 Eric Slover piloted the lead CH-47 Chinook helicopter that descended on the “heavily protected military fortress” where Maduro was staying.
Trump has launched several military operations during his second term, including strikes on members of the Islamic State group in Syria in retaliation for an ambush attack that killed two US troops and an American civilian interpreter in December.
The US military has also struck IS forces in Nigeria, after Trump accused the West African country's government of failing to rein in the targeting of Christians.
